PHOTO
SCAMP
SCAMP
SCAMP — Small Craft Advisor Magazine Project — is an 11'11" flat-bottomed, pram-bowed camping cruiser designed by John Welsford around 2009 and first launched 2010. Commissioned by SCA…
Full specifications coming with launchFounding fleet · now forming
HipBoats is a marketplace for small wooden sail-and-oar boats — Caledonia Yawls, SCAMPs, Skerries, Melonseeds, Shellbacks. Boats built in home shops and small yards, rented and shared by their owners.
Free to list. You set the price, the conditions, and who sails her.
Hero photographA wooden boat under sail or oar with someone aboard, shot from the beam. Landscape, at least 1600px wide. Your own Passagemaker would do nicely.
What this is
The big rental platforms won't touch these boats. Boatsetter's own rules exclude home-built hulls and anything over forty years old — which rules out most of the finest small craft afloat. So we built the place that doesn't.
Every listing names its designer and its design. Oughtred, Welsford, Harris, White, Vivier, Bolger. You know exactly what you're stepping into, down to the sail area.
Most of these boats were built by the person renting them out. They know every plank. That's not a risk — it's the best possible briefing before you cast off.
An open boat under lug rig asks something of you. We ask renters what they can actually do, and let owners decide who takes the tiller.
For owners
Most hand-built boats sail a dozen days a year and sit under a tarp for the rest. Listing yours doesn't mean handing her to strangers — it means choosing, on your terms, who sails her and when.
Nothing is automatic. Every booking comes to you with a note about the renter's experience, and you say yes or no. Sail with them the first time if you'd rather.
No listing fee, no subscription, no photographs to buy. We take a commission only when a rental actually completes.
Name her, pick the design from our catalog, say where she lives and what you'd charge. The specifications come from the design page — you don't type a single dimension.
Sheltered water only. No solo renters. Experienced sailors only. Owner aboard. Whatever the boat needs, say it plainly and we'll enforce it.
The designs
Every boat on HipBoats is a known, established design. We keep a reference page for each one — dimensions, rig options, sail areas, construction, who drew it and why it sails the way it does. Owners don't retype any of it; renters get the full picture before they book.
PHOTO
SCAMP
SCAMP — Small Craft Advisor Magazine Project — is an 11'11" flat-bottomed, pram-bowed camping cruiser designed by John Welsford around 2009 and first launched 2010. Commissioned by SCA…
Full specifications coming with launchPHOTO
Caledonia Yawl
The Caledonia Yawl is Iain Oughtred's signature design and the boat most closely associated with his name — a rugged 19'6" double-ended beach boat born from his deep familiarity with…
Full specifications coming with launchPHOTO
Skerry
The Skerry is a 15'7" lapstrake daysailer and camp-cruiser drawn by John C. Harris from the working small craft of the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the American Swampscott Dory…
Full specifications coming with launchPHOTO
Shellback Dinghy
The Shellback Dinghy is Joel White's 11-foot-2-inch sailing and rowing dinghy — one of the most-built wooden tenders in America and a benchmark of what a beginner-friendly plywood…
Full specifications coming with launchPHOTO
Ilur
The Ilur is François Vivier's best-selling sail-and-oar design, with close to a thousand sets of plans sold across the globe — an extraordinary number for a timber home-build dinghy…
Full specifications coming with launchPHOTO
Melonseed Skiff
The Melonseed is one of the most beautiful small sailing craft in the American tradition — a type evolved over the 19th century on New Jersey's Barnegat Bay by market gunners who…
Full specifications coming with launchHow it works
Browse by region. At this size you can see the whole fleet in one sitting — which is rather the point. Read the design page to know what you're getting into.
Send a request with a note about your experience — what you've sailed, where, how recently. The owner decides. Many will offer to come out with you first.
Meet at the ramp, the beach, or the mooring. Pay through the platform. Bring her back salty and tell the owner how she went.
Supporting photographA launch scene — boat on a trailer at a ramp, or being rowed off a beach. Something that shows the practical reality of a day out.
Founding fleet
A marketplace with three boats isn't much use to anyone, so we're building one region at a time — Puget Sound and the San Juans first, then Maine, then the UK. Owners who list early are marked as founding fleet, permanently, and we'll come and photograph your boat properly.
Founding fleet listings open this autumn.
Email sign-up goes live shortly. If you own a boat and want to be in the first fleet, get in touch and we will keep you posted.
Tell us whether you own a boat, want to rent one, or both — we'll ask in the follow-up. No more than one email a month, and none of the usual nonsense.
Questions
The honest answer, today: we're building the insurance side and we won't pretend otherwise. Our first product will be liability cover protecting both owner and renter. Hull cover may follow. Until it's in place we'll tell you exactly what is and isn't covered before you list — and you can require a deposit, require that you come aboard, or simply decline any request that worries you.
Good. That's most of this fleet, and it's precisely what the large platforms exclude. We never require a HIN. What we do record is the design, the builder, and the year — provenance rather than paperwork.
Yes, and we'd encourage it. Every listing sets a required experience level, from “owner aboard only” up to “has cruised or raced small open boats.” Renters declare their own experience and write you a paragraph about it. You approve every booking.
No. Plenty of owners will only sail with their boat, and that's a legitimate listing — a shared sail rather than a bareboat rental. Set “owner aboard” to required and it's yours the whole time.
Nothing to list. We take a commission on completed rentals only. If your boat never goes out, you never pay us anything.
HipBoats is built by a small-boat builder, not a software company. — write two or three sentences here. Say that you're building a Passagemaker from Fyne Boat Kits plans. In this community that matters more than any credential.